With the recent flying stunt of Trevor Jacob, it was reported that the F.A.A. revoked his pilot’s license, but they don’t have the authority to arrest him.
Assuming that Trevor did commit a crime with his flying stunt (as well as the two idiots who tried to swap planes in mid-air), who does have the authority to arrest them and how/where did they get the authority to arrest? I’m assuming (for example) that the switchboard operator at FBI headquarters can not perform an arrest.
Not to put too fine a point on it: I was once in a jury pool and the judge asked if anyone in the pool ever was in law enforcement. The person sitting next to me said, “Technically, anyone who worked for the executive branch of government, even a file clerk at the Social Security office, was assisting in the enforcement of some law…”
I think it all comes down to jurisdiction.
He crashed his plane in Los Padres National Forest, which is under the jurisdiction of U.S. Forest Service Law Enforcement & Investigations. They do have officers with arrest authority, so if he broke any federal laws in the forest, presumably one of their officers could arrest him.
As best I can tell, the FAA doesn’t have its own enforcement arm. It is strictly a regulatory agency, which is why they were able to yank his license. It operates under the Department of Transportation. They don’t seem to have an enforcement arm either - all of that was moved to the Dept. of Homeland Security when it was created.
So if he was suspected of committing a federal crime not under the jurisdiction of the US Forest Service, it stands to reason that an FBI agent would be assigned to the case and would have the authority to arrest him. That authority comes from a number of federal statutes.
I further suppose that the FBI agent - a no-nonsense career agent who is retiring at the end of the year - would be paired with an idealistic Forest Service agent who plays by their own rules but always manages to get the job done.
As for the arrest authority itself, it’s statutory and specific to each federal department. A lot of federal departments have officers who can make arrests. Here’s the statute about EPA officers.
A sort of “term of art” in this field is the phrase “sworn officer”, essentially in the United States, only sworn law enforcement officers have “general” arrest powers. Some non-sworn officers (i.e. regular citizens), have arrest powers in certain circumstances, a sworn law enforcement officer has arrest powers generally. However, their arrest power is typically limited by jurisdiction, different agencies have different jurisdictions based on the government that set up the agency and et cetera.
As some examples:
- A city police department typically their sworn officers have arrest authority inside the city’s municipal limits
- A county Sheriff’s department typically they have arrest authority anywhere in the county
- A State police department typically has arrest authority anywhere in the State
- The FBI has arrest authority anywhere in the United States, but for violations of Federal law, not “other laws.” Note that because our Federal government is a limited government of enumerated powers, the scope of crimes for which Federal sworn officers may arrest, is more limited than for officers at the State and local level. Also note, only “sworn” FBI agents have general arrest powers. The FBI has tons of employees that are not sworn law enforcement, and who have no special arrest powers.
- There are a number of special agencies at all levels of government that serve a very narrow jurisdiction. For example Railroad Police, under Federal statutes, get complicated, but they often are sworn law enforcement officers who can make arrests related to the operations of the railroad.
The simplest case is for things like an arrest warrant, the police will make sure the correct agency is involved in executing those. Exigent circumstance arrests can get muddier, but there is a good bit of court and legal guidance on those, i.e. a county Sheriff can generally apprehend someone who crosses the county line in many circumstances, but it does sometimes add paperwork complexity to the processing.
This was incorrect. The DOT has the Office of Inspector General.